Mark knows his way around a keyboard as well as a road course. He traded a 25-year career in newspaper journalism, with senior editor positions in Los Angeles, San Jose and Portland, OR, for the chance to manage Portland International Raceway in 2000. It was a case of moving from one love affair to another, driven by his love of racing nurtured as a teen turned loose at Riverside Raceway. He went into newspapers out of college as a way to get involved in racing, deciding a press pass was the fastest way to the front of the grid. He regularly reviews motorsports books for SCM, and he’s always in search of the elusive pony in the pile.

Muscle cars dominated my Southern California high-school parking lot at the end of the 1960s.

There were Mustangs, Camaros and even the odd Road Runner. Then there were my friends, tweed caps and all, with our Sprites, TR3s and MGAs. There was even a Mini. We were too young for briar pipes, but we could dream, couldn’t we?

But for some reason there were no Triumph Spitfires. So I never sat in one in period, and only saw a few. Read More

You look in the mirror one morning and instead of your own bleary eyes and grim, pre-work mug, you see Tom Selleck. It’s not the grizzled old Tom — it’s the dashing young Tom of “Magnum, P.I.,” as he casually vaults into that Ferrari.

Owning one of those would change everything, you think. You think you could afford one of those.

“One of those” is a 1984 308 GTS Quattrovalvole, and a few clicks in the SCM Platinum Auction Database Read More

Over the course of its 30-year lifespan, the Anderson Electric Car Company, builders of the Detroit Electric, produced more electric automobiles than any other American passenger-car manufacturer. Somewhat in vain, they tried to keep up with modern fashions, and by 1920 had updated their charmingly Read More

Some marques, even in the affordable category, seem to engender passionate supporters. Mention Alfa or Porsche, and the swooning starts. Even the humble Miata has a plenty-of-fans.

The Toyota MR2? Not so much.

But if you are looking for an affordable two-seater, it should be on your list to investigate. They are plentiful and have performance on par with the competition — across nearly 25 years of production and three wildly different design envelopes.

The accidental sports car

There’s nothing like a little wind in the old scalp, but if you were a BMW fan last century, there wasn’t much to choose from except a truly vintage two-seat roadster or the “rare-and-should-be” Z1 from 1989. That is, until the introduction of the Z3, way back in 1995.

The Z3 was a response to the wildly popular Mazda Miata — and recognition of the reappearing two-seater market niche. The successful introduction of the Miata in 1989 represented a sea Read More

Introduced in 1965, the GTA — the A stood for Alleggerita (lightened) — was the official competition version of the Giulia Sprint GT, and it was produced in both road and race variants. The latter, as usual, was the responsibility of the factory’s Autodelta competitions department, which had been founded in 1961 as an independent company by Carlo Chiti and Ludovico Chizzola, and subsequently absorbed by Alfa Romeo.

Visually almost indistinguishable from the road-going Sprint GT, the GTA differed by Read More

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